Anant Pai

It's our privilege to have the chance of introducing a great person who contributed a lot to the *Indian Children Library* . Let's learn more about him !

In 1967, while watching a TV quiz show on the state-run Doordarshan network, a young journalist realised that while the Indian children on the show could easily answer questions about Greek mythology, they couldn’t answer a simple question about an important character in Ramayana, one of India’s greatest epics.

Upset, he set out to change this by starting a comic-book series that would tell stories from Indian epics through beautifully illustrated, child-friendly narratives.The comic book series was Amar Chitra Katha and the young journalist was Anant Pai, the  writer and illustrator who would go on to become widely recognised as the “father of Indian comics”.

For an Indian child born before the year 2000, Amar Chitra Katha and its engrossing world of stories were synonymous with growing up.  This iconic book series taught several generations of Indian children about the country’s rich heritage of folk tales and mythology.

Born on Sept. 17, 1929, in Karkala in Karnataka) Anant Pai was orphaned when he was just two-years-old and grew up with relatives first in Mangalore and later in Mumbai. He fell in love with literature at a young age and devoted much of his time to learning several Indian languages.

Pai launched India’s first comic and cartoon syndicate, Rang Rekha Features. 

In 1980, Pai debuted a children’s magazine that would go on to become just as popular as ACK. A super fun comic digest, Tinkle covered contemporary Indian history, illustrated biographies of national icons and the delightful characters created by Pai. It also contained quizzes, contests and non-fiction articles on history, science and geography.

Pai was considered a walking encyclopedia as he had a story for every occasion and would often correct his employees by telling a story. 

The father of Indian comics did not have any children — other than the millions of young readers across the globe. 

 Here’s a little-known incident that tells volumes about the love and goodwill enjoyed by the legend and his comic books.

In 1994, the office of ACK caught fire in which all the artwork and original copies of the comic series were destroyed. A devastated ACK team published an appeal asking children to send any spare copies they had to them in the in the next issue of Tinkle. Thanks to the overwhelming response the appeal received !!! 

The team was able to recover a copy of every single Amar Chitra Katha book that was ever published!

That was the awesome following for the great ACK and its founder !